Freeform doctrine model

[Battlecry]

Doctrine, ingame, is essentially a representation of what a given nation's officer schools choose to teach their officers.
This was very narrow in the time frame (and still is, to a great degree), became even more narrow during the war (less time available = less taught), and is a entirely separate concept from "knowhow" - i.e. experience gained in war.

Experience in war can lead to alterations in doctrine (and this type of choice should also be represented), but almost never wholesale changeover. Overall I agree that national doctrines were in large part defined prewar. Very few nations would change their primary focus, they merely adapted their doctrines to new situations.

For instance rather than shifting wholesale to German-style mobile warfare, the USSR applied a new level of mobility to their concept of 'mass', which predated the war by a century or more, and continues to this day.
Similarly, the UK stuck to its focus on the set-piece battle, while incorporating new more mobile elements into it, along with an American-derived emphasis on firepower supremacy.

As for the specific OP about doctrines as sliders (more properly termed 'variables'), I think there is great promise but the idea needs to be fleshed out more fully. Variables can be a powerful tool for a more realistic progression in many aspects of the game, but the interrelationship between the different variables has to be worked out for it to take shape.

I have one specific idea at this time: I think a nation's allies & enemies could have a small effect on these variables - for instance a nation fighting heavily against Germany would learn about mobility bit by bit, while a nation allied with & fighting alongside the US would learn about firepower supremacy bit by bit, and what they learned would slowly enter the realm of doctrine.

 

[Driggsd]

I think you are onto something here battle cry. Over time your and your opponets sliders can move based on you reaction to divergent doctrines. Or both can be reinforced if you you have the same style doctrine. (like learning how to build a better shelter becuase the enemy has)

 

[out]

Yes, it's (almost) always battle experience that lead to changes in doctrines. However it's rather difficult to model how this change happens. That's why I want to take this dynamics completely into the players' hands.

Each nation should obviously start out with doctrine that suit their given army, tech level and resources. Provided that they don't have their armies wiped out in 1 month, most of these factors should remain more or less stable, only tweaking slightly as the circumstances change (i.e. Soviet slowly builds up armoured force). As some of you said already, there's lots of details that need to be worked out carefully, but properly implemented this could be both highly dynamic and highly historically accurate, yet also allowing for ridiculous what-if scenarios.

 

[langemarckdiv.]

If I am Germany and I have a lot of troops in France in defence, they can be guided and trained in defence tactics or doctrine and by the same time I can have a lot of armoured or infantry troops in SU who are fighting with the blitzkrieg doctrine.
Why ONE doctrine or choice for the whole of your army, independant if they are attacking, defending, garrisoning,... or independant in what zone they are operating.???

I think this is a real example that you can have different doctrines used in different situations in the same time so the theory proclaimed here isn't realistic.

Also no one answers my question: why should I spend money on doctrine when it makes me weaker on other points??

I think the current system with generals who have their strong and weak points is far more realistic.

 

[Battlecry]

If I am Germany and I have a lot of troops in France in defence, they can be guided and trained in defence tactics or doctrine and by the same time I can have a lot of armoured or infantry troops in SU who are fighting with the blitzkrieg doctrine.
Why ONE doctrine or choice for the whole of your army, independant if they are attacking, defending, garrisoning,... or independant in what zone they are operating.???

I think this is a real example that you can have different doctrines used in different situations in the same time so the theory proclaimed here isn't realistic.

Also no one answers my question: why should I spend money on doctrine when it makes me weaker on other points??

I think the current system with generals who have their strong and weak points is far more realistic.

All armies are trained in static defense tactics - that's very basic level. The German defense of France was designed to be a mobile defense (allied air supremacy was the key factor which negated this), built on the techniques developed for blitzkrieg. Liddell Hart & Guderian both envisioned their form of warfare as maneuver warfare, which is both offensive and defensive. Anyway doctrine only covers how divisions will function at an abstract level - how you choose to defend France (i.e. how you positions/move your units about) has nothing to do with it, as that's strategic (and personal) rather than tactical, and is not covered by anything in the game.

And there's no reason that you should spend money to make yourself weaker - you spend money on what is most important to you, things that you want to be better at, this doesn't make you weaker, per se, unless you mean vis a vis an enemy with a superior doctrine, which is historical. Certain doctrines will be superior to others, such is life.

You want your divisions to use entirely different doctrines on different fronts. Great. Armies don't do that, then or now, unless something goes horribly wrong (i.e. allied air supremacy as above), so I really don't know what to tell you, because "Too Bad" seems harsh.

EDIT: And I'm sure Generals will still have traits. I didn't see anyone suggest that they should be removed, so that point is moot.

 

[Alexander Seil]

Well, in real life, of course, operational practice will be modified by local conditions, but at this level it's practically impossible to track without having a very complicated experience system for individual divisions. Apart from that, however, it seems that Johan at least admits that it would be possible to accelerate, if not specialize, one's doctrinal research by actually participating in a war.

 

[unmerged(44926)]

I am intrigued by this proposal, but the thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't seem to offer much in the way of overall quality, and improvement over time.

If the slider settings contain a fair mixture of bonus and malus at either end of the spectrum, the greatest overall bonus would go to smaller nations without the resources needed to build a good variety of weapons. Specializing in infantry because you can't afford tanks, or TAC because you can't afford STR, or even defensive warfare because your army is too small to be attacking anybody would allow minors the bonus for extreme slider settings without losing out on anything, potentially making smaller nations and those with limited goals far superior to majors with huge armies and diverse commitments.

Furthermore, if this is distanced from research, and the sliders are weighted so that a bonus in one area comes with a penalty in another, there won't be any overall advancement over the course of the game. You might move things around so that the units you use the most are the most effective, but overall you're still no better after years of war. In terms of performance the British, Soviet and American armies were far better overall in 1945 than they were in '39 or '41.

I foresee problems such as the fast moving, armor focused German army of 1940, which still only contains a very small amount of armored and motorized units, getting slaughtered by an infantry focused, defense obsessed France. Or American Infantry in the Pacific performing poor compared to the mechanized army deployed to Europe.

The hard, linear path of tactical progression as in HoI2 is lacking, but an open system that allows specialization without much room for overall improvement is flawed as well.

 

[out]

I am intrigued by this proposal, but the thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't seem to offer much in the way of overall quality, and improvement over time.

The "overall quality and improvement over time" in this model will come in the form of fine tuning that better suit your army structure and strategic position. Yes, it would no longer simply make your troop "better", but why should it? The troops and commanders already gain experience on their own, and there are also the new practical experience and leadership concepts to be introduced in HoI3. So I'd say the "overall improvement over time" is already well-represented in HoI3.

After all, policies issued by the top command shouldn't magically make your troops better. It should however allow the troops to better utilize their assets.

As I've repeated pointed out, changing doctrines has nothing to do with your existing troop experience, or commander traits for that matter. I really don't see any conflict here whatsoever.

If the slider settings contain a fair mixture of bonus and malus at either end of the spectrum, the greatest overall bonus would go to smaller nations without the resources needed to build a good variety of weapons. Specializing in infantry because you can't afford tanks, or TAC because you can't afford STR, or even defensive warfare because your army is too small to be attacking anybody would allow minors the bonus for extreme slider settings without losing out on anything, potentially making smaller nations and those with limited goals far superior to majors with huge armies and diverse commitments.

This is something I've thought about for a long time (well, for the last few days). It's a valid point. I think ultimately the sliders shouldn't be completely "balanced" in that the bonus in one end shouldn't be the exact opposite of the other end.

It may sound a bit convoluted, but let's take an example of a quantity-quality slider with 9 steps; it would represent something like:

1. Fodder army
2. -
3. Conscript backbone
4. -
5. Balanced
6. -
7. Elite army
8. -
9. Armies of one

Let's say this is what a "complete spectrum" would be. But for the game's purpose, we really need only steps 2 to 6. On one hand, this would simplify the sliders somewhat, on the other, there is no such thing as a completely elite-based doctrine, just like there's no such thing as a tank-only army or carrier-only navy. To put it another way, the sliders should be "truncated" to cover only the reasonable.

And to address the concerns you raised about technologically advanced armies being disadvantaged, the bonuses should be greater overall on one end of the slider than the other, but the greatest sum of bonus should be somewhere toward the middle. So again, the sliders shouldn't be symetrically balanced.

Taking the same quality-quantity example, military theorists have found elite units work best when backed up by standard line troops, and vice versa. So in the above example, the slider step 5, "balanced", should probably have the best overall bonus. To take another example, on a truncated infantry-armour slider with 5 steps (note that this isn't the best example but it illustrates the point well):

2. Infantry only
3. Infantry based
4. Basic combined arms
5. Balanced
6. Armour focus

Here, step 5 or 6 or both should have the greatest overall bonuses. It fits the historic and technological reality. So again, one end of the slider should represent higher doctrinal sophistication and have better performance overall.

But what's to stop every country from rushing to the same doctrines? The answer is, of course, each country's unique strategic position. A country with high manpower and low tech and IC, like China, would be much better off sticking to a less sophisticated doctrine. France, with decent tech, IC and MP could reasonbly go for a more German style of mobile warfare, but they'd benefit less from their robust defense infrastructure. So unless they plan to preempt Germany, it may be wise to keep to static defense.

(Oh, one note: not all sliders need be this assymetrical. Sliders like line defense-defense in depth, for example, need not be as "unbalanced".)

Other factors should come into play as well. Let's say Venezuela has high MP, decent IC and tech (I'm just making this up). It might try for an Anglo-American style army if she decides to join the war in Europe. But if she has designs on her neighbours, she may want to keep a more primitive doctrine because the South American terrain isn't suited for mechanized warfare. This means forgoing their MP and tech advantage, but here their strategic position AND strategic goal makes such a doctrine choice reasonable.

Even advanced countries may want to go "back" at some point. Say USA lost the war against Germany and has Calif, Texas and CSA split off, losing a big chunk of mineral resource and MP. They may want to tone down their firepower focus and reliance on oil-intensive units. If Japan puppets China, she suddenly gains a huge MP pool. They may still use their quality troops against the Soviet, but they may have better overall result if they embrace the low-tech human wave made possible by the Chinese contributions.

The key is to make every slider setting worthwhile, so that different country, at different times, with different strategic position and strategic goals, would have a different doctrinal sweet spots.

I hope my explanation isn't too incoherent...

 

[unmerged(44926)]

I hope my explanation isn't to incoherent...

Not at all, I get what you are saying. I just have my doubts that experience and technological progression will do enough to seperate top quality armies from those with serious weaknesses (Germany vs. Poland or France, or '40 Soviet Union vs. '45 Soviet Union, for example) while still generating enough flavour.

If the sliders are balanced, diverse armies will suffer (and this certainly was not the case) and if they are lopsided they will tend towards uniformity as players discover optimal settings, killing flavour if they are allowed to be moved rather quickly. If they move too slow to be seriously tampered with, the system doesn't allow for adaptation to changing conditions, which did happen, if not always spectacularily, during the war.

Personally I would limit use of the sliders to material considerations like manpower vs. firepower and quality vs. quantity, and leave the tactical and operational distinctions as part of tech research.

 

[out]

If the sliders are balanced, diverse armies will suffer (and this certainly was not the case) and if they are lopsided they will tend towards uniformity as players discover optimal settings, killing flavour if they are allowed to be moved rather quickly. If they move too slow to be seriously tampered with, the system doesn't allow for adaptation to changing conditions, which did happen, if not always spectacularily, during the war.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's going to be easy to balance the sliders. But again the point is to offer worthwhile advantage for each setting while rewarding sophisticated doctrines above others.

With regards to how quickly the doctrines can be moved, I think the leadership and practical experience cost to move the sliders would serve to balance this out. This is actually a pretty realistic way of representing the personnel changes that would result in a doctrine shift.

Personally I would limit use of the sliders to material considerations like manpower vs. firepower and quality vs. quantity, and leave the tactical and operational distinctions as part of tech research.

I don't quite get what you mean by "tactical and operational distinctions" here. Essentially I think the doctrine model should be there to give the player some degree of control over the abstracted combat model. This is pretty much the same thing as what the HoI2 doctrines do, except in HoI2 they are locked into static trees. I really don't think these doctrines should have any effect on industrial output. Are you saying that this shouldn't be the case?

 

[langemarckdiv.]

With this slider system, you DO become less performant in the things you don't focus on and therefore it is a bad system for the most strong countries who should have the means to have the best armies.
Anyway, I don't think this system will be used, but the good old one.

 

[Xz2]

i havnt thought this one through but...

what if this freeform doctrine had a speration between diffrent troop types. for example:

Infantry:
Deep defence vs. static defence
Specialisation vs. generall trooptypes (example stormtroopers vs just standard troops. (witin the divison)
etc.

and a combine arms:
armor vs. infantry (should tanks be infantry support or mbt)

this whould not punish for example the us army for having mechnized in europe, standard inland and specialisation troops in pacific.

 

[unmerged(44926)]

I'm having a hard time describing what I'm thinking of here. Let me try again.

I imagine that the sliders will work great for things that are not directly related to certain unit types. For example you might have a slider determining how carefully a nation uses its available manpower.

On one extreme is human wave tactics, which would be suited for nations with more manpower than technology and equipment. This end would represent masses of poorly trained and equiped troops, cheaper to build and reinforce, less effective in combat and generally more likely to take casualties. The other extreme would represent a focus on firepower over manpower. Suited for nations with good technology and industry but limited manpower, this would result in more expensive and better trained units which consume more supplies, but are generally more effective in combat.

Another might be Static vs. Mobile defence. On the static end of things dug-in bonuses might increase, and artillery becomes more effective, while on the mobile end of things there are better defensive combat events and maybe improved morale to represent units recovering from reversals faster.

I also think that such sliders should effect the level of org at which units will either call off an attack or abandon a defensive position. Extreme focus on either human wave tactics or static defense should greatly increase the casualties taken by your units.

These sorts of things have a rather simple spectrum, a yes or no answer if you will, and lend themselves to a simple slider representing both extremes and everything in between.

The differences in German methods of attack, with specific points of focus and an emphasis on creating and exploiting breakthroughs and low level initiative compared to methodically planned British methods of attack, or Soviet wide front advances, or Japanese guerilla tactics does not lend itself to being represented by sliders... Even if all these distinctions could be broken down into dozens of individual sliders, I still see problems. The spectacular early German successes with armoured attacks would probably put them more on the armoured side of the equation than the Soviet Union, but the Soviets still used their tanks to great effect... And the German infantry continued to outperform the Soviet infantry on a man to man basis until very late in the war... It would be very, very hard to represent these sorts of distinctions though sliders without a disgustingly complicated slider system.

 

[out]

It would be very, very hard to represent these sorts of distinctions though sliders without a disgustingly complicated slider system.

I understand your concern, but the thing is that this aspect of the war is already abstracted in HoI2. I mentioned in the OP of a multi-ended slider (like the IC allocation sliders) that allows you to choose "event" preference. It's not complicated at all. You want more blitz? Then put more preference in "breakthrough". Static defense? increase "delay".

The freeform doctrine system doesn't really alter the way these tactical details are abstracted and modeled in the game, it just takes the control from the tech tree to the player. Now if HoI3 significantly changes the combat model, it's another story. But assuming the combat to be largely the same as HoI2, this proposal does not attempt to improve on this tactical distinction, nor does it make it worse.

With this slider system, you DO become less performant in the things you don't focus on and therefore it is a bad system for the most strong countries who should have the means to have the best armies.

The strongest countries will have the best armies anyway. But America lost Vietnam anyway and couldn't take North Korea, because they had doctrines that better suited the strategic situation. Nobody's forcing you to change your doctrine to be less performant if you already have a good doctrine, so I don't understand why you're paranoid about becoming weaker. I'm sorry if you simply want major powers' troops to all become super soldiers eventually. That simply does not happen.

Let me ask you this: According to your objection, why shouldn't USA be allowed to research firepower AND human wave doctrines at the same time?

 

[bz249]

The strongest countries will have the best armies anyway. But America lost Vietnam anyway and couldn't take North Korea, because they had doctrines that better suited the strategic situation. Nobody's forcing you to change your doctrine to be less performant if you already have a good doctrine, so I don't understand why you're paranoid about becoming weaker. I'm sorry if you simply want major powers' troops to all become super soldiers eventually. That simply does not happen.

Let me ask you this: According to your objection, why shouldn't USA be allowed to research firepower AND human wave doctrines at the same time?

Well the US 'defeat' in Vietnam has nothing to do with the tactical doctrines. The US had lost 58.000 soldiers (one third of them is due to friendly fire and accidents) while the NVA lost more than one million. Not huge victory on the battlefield for the NVA.

The US lost for two reasons (which can not work in ww2)
- the US have not set any real goal during the campaign (like unconditional surrender of all Axis forces)... with no goal, you can not achieve victory (since victory achieveing your goals)
- the Vietnam war lacked political support (can you believe any succesful pacifist movement after Pearl?)

 

[out]

Well the US 'defeat' in Vietnam has nothing to do with the tactical doctrines.

Sure, I'm not going to dispute that. Not because I necessarily agree; it's just a can of worms I'd like to keep closed.

But why couldn't the US win in Korea? They had "superior" doctrine, superior weaponry, superior supply, superior combined arms, and numerically on par, yet they struggled to halt the Chinese counter attack. The Chinese had a rather "primitive" doctrine, were ill-supplied and poorly equiped, how could they have possibly contained the best equiped army in the world? It has nothing to do with their tactical doctrines, do you think?

 

[unmerged(44926)]

Sure, I'm not going to dispute that. Not because I necessarily agree; it's just a can of worms I'd like to keep closed.

But why couldn't the US win in Korea? They had "superior" doctrine, superior weaponry, superior supply, superior combined arms, and numerically on par, yet they struggled to halt the Chinese counter attack. The Chinese had a rather "primitive" doctrine, were ill-supplied and poorly equiped, how could they have possibly contained the best equiped army in the world? It has nothing to do with their tactical doctrines, do you think?

I'd argue that in Korea any struggles the US had with the Chinese were the result of political limitations on military conduct, not chinese strategy or tactics. If the goal had have been total military victory, political consequences be damned, MacArthur would have gladly kept going until he reached Beijing. (and probably triggered another world war, but that's another discussion.)

Examples like Vietnam against my arguement that the largest and wealthiest nations should have the best armies are flawed, first because in the 10 year period covered by the game, the best armies were fielded by the greatest powers, and the most effective weapons produced in large, highly industrial countries, and second because it was precisely that fact that led to the creation of modern guerilla warfare as a method by which poorly equiped forces willing to suffer extreme casualties might stand a chance at defeating a great power through exaustion rather than try and win a military victory in a conventional sense. Since the game ends in the late 40's, and assymetrical warfare isn't really possible using the HoI combat model, the following discussion might be moot, but...

In cases like the French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam and the Soviets in Afghanistan, where great powers suffered humiliating defeats, tactical doctrine had little to do with it. With the possible exception of Dien Bien Phu, conventional battles always produced lopsided results in favour of the industrial powers... The problem was that the new enemies didn't seek battle in the traditional sense, but rather to be a continuous drain on enemy patience and willpower. Even in this they still suffered far worse casualties than they inflicted on the colonial powers... they were just more willing to suffer them. Had the NVA or the Mujahadeen tried to stand and fight, or just to make a more absurd example, tried to take the war to their enemy's homeland, they would have been totally annihilated. By comparison, the well equiped and trained forces of the great powers are super soldiers... the problem with super soldiers is that they are expensive... and we are watching on TV.

Getting off topic here. As for your question, I think the reason that the US couldn't develop both human wave and superior firepower is that the two are basically opposites. The focus on overwhelming firepower was developed out of a desire to avoid losses on the scale that the futile charges of the first world war produced. Human Wave tactics are accepting that your only strength lay in numbers, and deciding that you are willing to throw bodies against the enemy in order to break them at any cost. Trying to combine both would probably just result in disgusting amounts of friendly fire.

That is a relatively black and white choice, and I support a slider in that case. More specific tactics I believe still need to be represented as individual improvements, rather than a choice of this vs. that.

I could potentially see something working where tactical "points" are invested in different types of attacks (spearhead, pre-planned defense, infiltration etc.) as they are gained over the course of the game to allow the player to specifically focus on improving certain areas without forcing a weakness in other areas for cases where it's not just a simple case of choosing one thing over another.

 

[langemarckdiv.]

[
Let me ask you this: According to your objection, why shouldn't USA be allowed to research firepower AND human wave doctrines at the same time?[/QUOTE]


I don't think i'm paranoid because I think the current sysytem is better than your proposition.

Your proposition is too theoretical, why can't USA have strong firepower (which is for arm and art brigades) and some sort of human wave (for infantry) since they have high IC to have high quality and much MP to have the masses.
Countries with high IC but low MP are automatically pushed towards quality because they simply can't make endless divisions.

The discussion is off course: can an army use different doctrines for different places, time and units or does it use always the same doctrine no matter what time or place or unit or terrain or...

I think an army can be that flexible (anyway it should be).

 

[unmerged(127904)]

There are always differences within 1 army depending on front, tactics for that theater and commanders witch can have different view on the same strategy. IMHO sliders make everything to simple. Its not like that IRL.
I really hope its gonna stay (at leaast in many aspects) the old way where i could be good in statics and mobile at once and so on. I1 thing i disliked in the doctrine tree was that it was too static. U could not research the same tree as other countries (or parts of it) - that should change. There were some good mods that made it more realistic.

 

[Nilmerf]

The US lost for two reasons (which can not work in ww2)
- the US have not set any real goal during the campaign (like unconditional surrender of all Axis forces)... with no goal, you can not achieve victory (since victory achieveing your goals)
- the Vietnam war lacked political support (can you believe any succesful pacifist movement after Pearl?)

Someone has studied Clausewitz!